Intel Real Sense Camera SR300 cannot work on IntelRealSenseViewer after 28 Jan 2019

[ZOng]

Hi, I have an Intel Real Sense Camera SR300 and it works fine with Intel.RealSenseViewer before 28 Jan 2019. After that day, the viewer SDK can no longer display the image. But Device Manager shows that the device is connected. Is there any solution for this? Thank you very much.

[MartyG]

I tested the current version of the Viewer with the SR300 and did not experience problems.

If you are using Windows, a common cause of 'it worked fine until today' type problems is that Windows has downloaded an update that has affected the camera.

There are some common possibilities for problems with using the SR300, which I will list below.

1. The USB ports of the PC have a power instability

RealSense cameras are very sensitive to the state of the USB port. Even if the camera has worked before, if a Windows update has changed something in how it handles the USB ports then the ports may not be supplying the camera with power stably enough to maintain a connection. This can lead to a situation where the camera can be detected in the Device Manager but disconnects immediately or very soon after an app that uses the camera (such as the RealSense Viewer) tries to turn the camera on.

In these circumstances, in the case of the RealSense Viewer, the camera may display its settings correctly in the options side-panel but the stream will not display when it is activated. A symptom of this is that a 'Disconnected' message may appear in the Viewer's on-screen message log.

If an SR300 has USB power instability problems, the first thing to try is to plug the camera into another USB 3 port on the PC if you have one, as the camera may work in one port but not another (or none of the ports). Plugging the camera into a mains-powered USB hub device instead of directly into the PC also increases the chances of solving problems related to USB instability.

 2. The camera's Virtual Driver is missing

Sometimes, problems can be caused if one of the camera's drivers called the Virtual Driver has gone missing from the Device Manager.

In the Imaging Devices section of Device Manager, could you please check that you have both the 'SR300 Depth' and 'SR300 Virtual' drivers displayed.

3. Windows has enabled access privacy for your camera after an update

Please follow the procedure below to check whether Windows has camera access enabled in its privacy settings. This is because there were cases last year of Windows changing this setting after an update.

You can find the Privacy window by typing 'privacy' into the search box at the bottom of your Windows screen, next to the button where you shut down the PC. Once the Privacy window is open, select the 'Camera' option in the side-panel.

Both the 'Allow access to the camera on this device' and the 'Allow apps to access your camera' options should be set to On.

If none of the test procedures above lead to a solution for you, please let us know and we can explore further possibilities.

[ZOng]

I think my problem falls on case number 2 where there is missing drive, I did try to reinstall the driver using driver installation from Intel website and it still can't work. Do you know how to fix this?

[MartyG]

If you have installed the Depth Camera Manager (DCM) program downloaded from the Intel website, please look in the Imaging Devices section of the Device Manager and see if it has a listing called 'Unknown Device'. If it does,  right-click on Unknown Device and select the 'Scan for hardware changes' option.

Over the course of about 30 seconds, the Device Manager window flashes a few times to indicate something is happening in the background, and then the missing driver should hopefully appear in the Imaging Devices section.

[ZOng]

I just tried install the DCM from Intel with the Intel Real Sense Camera SR300 connected to my laptop but it shows that there is no camera detected.

[ZOng]

And when I replug the SR300 again the device manager shows like this.

[MartyG]

Let's try a fresh install next using automatic download via Windows Update instead of using the DCM.

STEP ONE

Right-click on the RGB and Depth drivers and on each one, select Uninstall from the menu.

STEP TWO

When the SR300 drivers have been removed, unplug the camera from the USB 3.0 port, wait a couple of seconds and then plug the camera back in. Over the course of about 30 seconds, if all is well, the drivers should automatically download over the internet and install themselves, appearing in the Device Manager.